Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

I get information related to application transactions on a day-to-day basis and manage their capacity augmentation according to transaction details. We collect errors and exceptions from end-user applications, and we share the details with the application development team that works on the application errors and exceptions to resolve and create enhanced performance with the help of Splunk AppDynamics. We have been working with Splunk AppDynamics for the last six years.

The main feature for Splunk AppDynamics is the application drill-down, and the application users utilize it with the help of the next blank panel on their application. An application developer, with the help of Splunk AppDynamics, collects data to get the correct information related to their application code and how the application code performs under low load and high load. Once they get the correct information through Splunk AppDynamics, they will enhance their code to perform better under high load.

It is a very user-friendly tool, and I have used multiple tools related to APM technology, not only Splunk AppDynamics. We have multiple tools, but end users prefer to use Splunk AppDynamics because their portal navigation is very simple and clear.

Application owners build down their application performance through Splunk AppDynamics. Based on the information related to daily, weekly, and monthly metrics, the application development team receives related information for their application performance, and they try to resolve application errors and exceptions, which is achieved via Splunk AppDynamics to enhance their performance.

There is a policy related to dynamic performance to baseline, and end users check their application performance according to their baseline, gathering information about their performance. Based on that information, they take corrective measures related to their applications and resolve issues and errors.

Dynatrace has multiple functions compared to Splunk AppDynamics, so Splunk AppDynamics should add those functions, which are not available as of now. Dynatrace has a universal agent that collects all information related to their CI, and if one CI has multiple languages, then there is no need to instrument multiple agents. 

However, Splunk AppDynamics requires multiple agents; if I have one server with multiple applications in different languages, then I need to instrument different agents for each application. 

Splunk AppDynamics should work with Dynatrace with one single universal agent that works with all application languages, eliminating the need for multiple implementations.

Regarding stability, it is a very nice and good tool. There are no issues or bugs with the 20.4 version; it is very stable with no functionality or operational issues. I would give it ten out of ten.

The support team for Splunk AppDynamics is very helpful, and they help us resolve any issues raised by our team relating to operations, application instrumentation, or any other issues. I would give them a nine out of ten.

The new version is very straightforward. I would give it a ten out of nine, and there are no issues related to deployment; it is very easy and straightforward to deploy.

There are multiple benefits related to the APM market, but we experience benefits related to application performance only. According to errors, exceptions, and code-level details related to their application performance on a daily basis, the application development team tries to help with Splunk AppDynamics to reduce errors and exceptions, which helps the end users get application availability and feel more confident.

I rate Splunk AppDynamics 10 out of 10.

My main use cases for Splunk AppDynamics include APM, application performance monitoring.

The features of Splunk AppDynamics that I appreciate most are the business processes. These features benefit my organization by providing a bigger picture, not only of their own systems, however, how it influences other parts of the environment and how we are being influenced by other parts. For its time, Splunk AppDynamics helped improve my organization's business resilience quite a bit.

To improve Splunk AppDynamics, it should migrate seamlessly into observability Splunk, which is called Splunk Observability Cloud.

I have been using Splunk AppDynamics for around 15 years.

The stability and reliability of Splunk AppDynamics were okay. I did not experience unusual downtime, crashes, or performance issues; no software is perfect, but it was within the expected parameters.

Splunk AppDynamics had some confusion about the SaaS, no SaaS, only SaaS strategy, which wasn't clear. Some time ago, they committed again to on-premises, however, it was too late.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as good, seven out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting Splunk AppDynamics, I was not using another solution to address similar needs; this was our first step into the APM world.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that it was very expensive.

Sadly, I did not see return on investment with Splunk AppDynamics.

The solution I was using prior was Grafana Cloud.

What caused me to stop using the solution is that we failed to bring the product to our DevOps teams so that they could easily use it and learn how to use it, this is something we had to learn again. I would advise other organizations considering Splunk AppDynamics to take a sharp look at the whole Splunk product portfolio and how they merge to observability cloud, integrating many AppDynamics features; this is very interesting, but I don't know whether or not they are already there.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Splunk AppDynamics seven out of ten.

The use case for Splunk AppDynamics is mostly for performance monitoring.

I've been using it since 2019, and Splunk AppDynamics has been a very good tool from the beginning. While I haven't seen many new features, it has improved in various places, particularly in identifying transactions and pinpointing the nodes and other applications it uses, such as Apache Kafka or other third-party applications. It clearly creates a mapping of the transaction. It is also more dependable and reliable. I have also seen a couple of extra features for analyzing the transaction. It goes more in-depth in some areas.

The effectiveness of the auto-discovery and mapping in visualizing my application ecosystem is almost perfect. Although it could be improved further, it is currently in very good shape, allowing performance testers to check exactly what is going on, where the transaction is going, where it's spending time, or failing.

My experience with the application performance monitoring capabilities of Splunk AppDynamics has been very good because it gives me all the data I need and provides a very friendly interface, allowing me to showcase any issues to the customer with ease. The feature to copy a hyperlink to the specific timeframe or transaction I want also makes my job easier by allowing me to pinpoint something to an architect or any participant, who can open it up on their screen and easily understand the issue due to the friendly user interface.

Line-of-code-level troubleshooting feature is very helpful. I have used it a couple of times, and it allowed us to diagnose which part of the code seemed to have the issue, although it did make mistakes and didn't pinpoint the errors exactly in some cases. Overall, it's a very nice feature.

Splunk AppDynamics' digital experience monitoring affects my ability to optimize user experience in a very good way because the results I get often need to be transferred to other stakeholders of the project. The friendly and good user interface allows me to show them what I mean by the results and my analysis.

Splunk AppDynamics’ infrastructure monitoring is very good at correlating infrastructure and application performance.

The best feature of about Splunk AppDynamics is its interface, which allows me to see the full transaction, exactly what is happening, from where it starts to where the call is going, all the services involved in a call, and exactly the time it took from each node to each node along with the network delays. It pretty much provides everything a performance tester would need to do profiling of their results.

Splunk AppDynamics has enormous capabilities that allow me to see the memory and CPU usage, along with the garbage collections. In the case of performance issues, it allows me to dig through the transactions and find out what exactly the issue was to alert the architects and developers to address that issue. I am very happy with Splunk AppDynamics.

I don't really use AI-powered anomaly detection and root cause analysis for diagnosing performance issues because it makes many mistakes in my case, due to the nature of my work.  I prefer to do it manually and be aware of what is going on, rather than relying on that.

If it could have a sub-tool for monitoring Apache Kafka lag, it would save me even more time. There are ways to do it now, but a direct way would be faster and better. 

It would be much better if there were a way to search for specific transactions, similar to how Splunk allows, which aids in filtering transactions that show a huge increase in time.

I have been using Splunk AppDynamics since 2019.

In the early years, we had a couple of issues. It is more stable now. I don't see any of those issues anymore. There are no downtimes. I would rate the stability of Splunk AppDynamics as a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Splunk AppDynamics as a nine out of ten. A few features could be added to reach a perfect score of ten.

Our environment includes multiple locations and multiple departments. In my company, there are many users working with Splunk AppDynamics.

I haven't worked with them directly. I remember the developers contacted them once, and they received answers within one or two days. I would rate their technical support as good.

Positive

I have experience with other solutions, but I see Splunk AppDynamics as a top-tier option, with the rest I've worked with falling far below it.

Splunk AppDynamics stands out in the freedom it provides you to visualize everything. You can pretty much monitor anything that comes to your mind. It doesn't specify a way or how to do it. That's very important for me because it makes my job easier. I can configure it or work in thousands of ways. Along with Splunk, you can even see the logs in-depth. You can see exactly what happened at which transaction and where. Other tools don't provide this much depth or this much freedom to do things you want.

Developers did the deployment, not me. As far as I remember, it was done in less than two days. 

The company I work for now has an enterprise solution.

It does require maintenance, but it's not my job. That's other department's responsibility.

We have seen a return on investment from Splunk AppDynamics. To understand the magnitude of it, without it five people would be needed to do the analysis that Splunk AppDynamics enables me to do. Splunk AppDynamics has definitely saved me many hours per week, approximately 50% of the time.

I would recommend Splunk AppDynamics to other users because it has helped me in many ways. It is a very stable and solid tool. It never has false results. I have seen other tools producing wrong results. That's not the case with Splunk AppDynamics. It either works and provides solid results, or it doesn't work and requires maintenance, which is a very important distinction. It has a very nice graphical user interface. It allows someone to interpret things easily. It provides freedom to the user to use it as they want. These are the reasons I would recommend it.

I would rate Splunk AppDynamics a ten out of ten.

The main use cases for it are similar to APM from Broadcom.

Splunk AppDynamics is very similar to APM. The part of the database is interesting since users can do many things with this dashboard, and the business dashboards are also very interesting. The main dashboard, showing all communication between components or business transactions, is very interesting as well.

This is similar to APM from Broadcom. The most important thing is managing the performance of the application for critical business in organizations, and it's very important to do this with the solution you want. If you don't have this kind of application, it's impossible to know what happened with your critical business.

It's similar to ABM from Broadcom. It's important to have. You need to be able to manage the performance of the applications that are critical for business in an organization. If you don't have this kind of application, it's impossible to know what's happening with your critical business aspects. 

With Splunk AppDynamics, the database part is interesting. Users can do many things with this dashboard, and the business dashboards are also very interesting. The main dashboard, showing all communication between components or business transactions, is very interesting as well. For example, the baseline of all metrics in the Splunk AppDynamics database is very interesting. It can send alarms or alerts when the database baseline is not correct.

The effectiveness of the Splunk AppDynamics auto-discovery and mapping is similar. It's maybe a little better than APM from Broadcom. However, it's not the best. Users need to modify or configure many things to get good information from discovery. It's good, yet there is something to improve.

Business transaction monitoring is the more interesting part of Splunk AppDynamics since it has automatic discovery of business transactions and many different kinds. For example, for web services or different kinds of components, such as in Java. Users can configure business sections in their environment, and it's possible for customers to configure different sources for the name of the class, the name of the method, or the name of the web service, which is very interesting.

I work with the AI-powered anomaly detection and root cause analysis for troubleshooting. Users can see the error and the message with the error on the dashboard, and they can see exactly what error they are encountering.

The user experience is good. Its impact is very high. It's crucial to be easy to manage for the customer's user experience.

The discovery is acceptable, however, users need to configure many things if they want good discovery. These points are candidates for improvement.

A good integration with the CMDB would be beneficial, so users can see a good view of the final services automatically. A good integration with Splunk would be very interesting, as Splunk is a good product for logs, and that part is currently missing in Splunk AppDynamics. If Cisco can achieve a solid integrated solution, it would be very beneficial.

I have used Splunk only for the security part, not with the APM part - only with the security and management of logs. I have used Splunk AppDynamics for approximately five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have had a good experience with Splunk AppDynamics compared to APM from Broadcom. AppDynamics if much more helpful.

Support is generally okay, and the support is knowledgeable. 

Positive

We have experience with another solution, with performance, with application performance, with infrastructure, alongside the other product we are working with.

It's very different. The most important aspect is that the discovery of Splunk AppDynamics is better than APM from Broadcom, along with the dashboard and many other features.

It's very complex regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Splunk AppDynamics. Normally, when we have to do a quote for a customer, we talk with Cisco, and it is very complex. For me, it is more complex than APM from Broadcom, which is easier. Cisco being complex depends on the part of the solution, the agent, and many things.

The solution is better in on-premises environments.

Splunk is only SaaS, and in two years, or when these solutions are integrated, maybe it will be a better SaaS solution. Right now, for on-premises environments, it's the best.

There is maintenance needed, and it's important to do the maintenance work. We have to do a lot of things to maintain it properly. It's not difficult. However, you do need to do a bit of work - more so than APM Broadcom.

Ten years ago, it was good, however, now it's complex in Cisco. We tried to integrate Splunk with Splunk AppDynamics, and maybe in the future, it will be a good solution. Right now, it's two separate solutions, and it's not a good integration.

Splunk AppDynamics' infrastructure monitoring is satisfactory. Users have a main dashboard with all information. If there is a problem with memory, CPU, or something else in a server, users get a red alert, and they can click on that component to see the specific metric related to that CPU, memory, or network problem, and the correlation is very good.

It optimizes the user experience for customers.

My experience is more from Java and .NET applications. I don't have security skills, however, customers find it acceptable to see this information in the global context regarding their applications.

It depends on the integration with Splunk that I mentioned before. I prefer to wait to see what happens with that, but Splunk AppDynamics is a very good solution, and I believe that integrating Splunk will yield excellent results.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate it a seven.

Our use case is in the lower environment. We are not using it in the production environment. We are part of the performance testing team, so we monitor the users on this server through performance testing, and during that time, we use all the agents, install them on the server, and monitor any bottlenecks. We use Splunk AppDynamics for deep dive analysis and provide inputs to the team. That is our use case.

We are using it only for the on-premises environment, but we are exploring options for Azure-hosted applications and AWS-hosted applications.

Splunk AppDynamics helps us in identifying bottlenecks and providing fine-tuning recommendations. We have many sites. We do deployments and analyze products. Before, as a performance testing team, we were not in a position to tell the team where the issue was happening, only able to provide numbers. With Splunk AppDynamics, we can pinpoint exactly where we need to concentrate and provide recommendations for fine-tuning. Without it, it was a nightmare. We wouldn't have been able to provide this information. 

The metrics browser is very useful, and the deep dive feature is very useful for us. 

Product-wise, everything is good, but the main concern is the extensions and their documentation, particularly for the installation of Azure app services. It is lacking some documentation, which is why we are always with the AppDynamics team for support to get the details.

Additionally, whenever they upgrade or add new features, we do not get notifications, which makes it very hard for us to find out new information. If they could fix this, it would be helpful, and our satisfaction score would increase.

We have been using Splunk AppDynamics for almost three years.

We are using the cloud version only and not an on-premises installation. I am not sure what to expect on the scalability front, but it is useful for us. We have tried it with a maximum of 500 concurrent users, and it provided all the required information.

Initially, we had some hiccups getting technical support. After some time, we got a contact, an account manager, to work directly with for technical support. He immediately finds a resource and assigns it to us.

Positive

We haven't done that exercise. We are working on a mix of applications, such as SaaS, AWS-hosted, Azure, and on-premises applications. It's very hard to find ROI because we are currently focused only on the on-premises applications. In a year, we work on about 20 projects, but we get only two or three projects using Splunk AppDynamics. For the others, because they are vendor-hosted, we don't utilize it. We are still trying it, and maybe once we develop that capability, we'll start finding ROI. Currently, we are not performing any exercise on calculating ROI.

We find its pricing reasonable and competitive. After it was acquired by Cisco, we found it acceptable.

I would rate Splunk AppDynamics an eight out of ten.

I am currently supporting Blue Yonder, where I implemented the Splunk AppDynamics solution for EY, Ernst & Young, and now I'm working with international companies, as you may be aware of Blue Yonder. I'm implementing Splunk AppDynamics for Blue Yonder, which has a variety of logistics and supply chain management applications to monitor, serving around 500 plus clients.

Predominantly, for this current project, we are using Application Performance Monitoring in Splunk AppDynamics, mainly for the Java instrumentations, as our application is completely based on Java, which helps to identify business transactions, bottlenecks, and also monitor database performance using custom queries.

I find the anomaly detection feature in Splunk AppDynamics quite good, as it was introduced about a year back, and we had enabled it.

Infrastructure monitoring in Splunk AppDynamics is really helping as it allows us to understand overall application performance and any bottlenecks, especially when we implement the machine agent alongside Application Performance Monitoring.

The main benefits from Splunk AppDynamics for my end users, mainly the application team, are that it helps identify bottlenecks proactively and allows for configuration of proper health rules to address issues before they affect customers.

I see that the main challenge with Splunk AppDynamics is the management of multiple agents, as installing several agents on a server is a significant hurdle we still face.

Functionality-wise, I would like to see more cognitive solutions in Splunk AppDynamics, ideally with a single agent that can implement policies and provide predictive insights regarding application performance degradation during peak times.

I have been working with Splunk AppDynamics for almost five to six years.

I rate the stability of Splunk AppDynamics an eight, as I have not faced many stability issues with the product.

Regarding scalability, I would also rate it an eight, as I have not encountered significant performance issues, especially being in a stable SaaS environment.

With our premium support contract for Splunk AppDynamics, we are very satisfied, receiving consistent support including bi-weekly calls with customer success managers and product specialists.

Currently, people are leaning toward Dynatrace, possibly due to its AI capabilities such as the Davis feature, which offer a single agent concept that is easier to implement and maintain.

For Splunk AppDynamics, the initial setup process I've encountered has been simple since I only increased the scope of what was already established four years ago, and while there is a challenge with multiple agent solutions, the product is generally beneficial.

We purchase Splunk AppDynamics through our vendor, HCL Technologies, as they handle all sales instead of direct from the vendor.

In my opinion, the main competitor to Splunk AppDynamics in the market is Dynatrace.

It is used as an APM. We utilize Splunk as a SIEM for security and infrastructure observability.

What I like the most about Splunk AppDynamics is the end-to-end observability for the application, along with traces. It enhances productivity and aids in cost avoidance.

Splunk AppDynamics is no longer available as a standalone product in the market. Cisco has integrated it into their full-stack observability solution called the Splunk Observability Cloud. Therefore, purchasing Splunk AppDynamics as a standalone product is no longer an option, which presents a challenge for us. After Cisco acquired Splunk in 2023, Splunk AppDynamics, initially a separate product, became part of Cisco's full-stack solution. This change means that I can no longer deploy it as before.

Splunk AppDynamics does not support the complete MELT framework, which includes metrics, events, logging, and tracing for the entire stack. It lacks maturity in correlation within the observability spectrum. Splunk AppDynamics provides an end-to-end view of the application but misses the infrastructure part, which is crucial.

I have used this solution for nearly six years, dating back to 2019.

It is quite stable. We have faced challenges with Splunk agents and Splunk AppDynamics agents. You often have multiple agents running simultaneously in the infrastructure. This can sometimes cause conflicts with your application, so it is necessary to conduct appropriate testing before deploying them in production to prevent potential outages.

We are facing issues at the moment with Splunk and scalability. We have reached maximum capacity in our tier, and extending capacity has not been cost-effective from Splunk's perspective.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I find the initial setup to be of medium to high complexity. It requires appropriate initial planning for the tools to be successfully implemented.

After implementation, it takes a little bit of time to realize its value.

We leveraged professional services from both Splunk and Cisco for the deployment of Splunk AppDynamics.

The pricing is quite comparable to similar solutions in the market. All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage.

I would rate Splunk AppDynamics a seven out of ten. When addressing observability concerns, one should not only focus on the application layer. A full observability approach is required. New tools focus on the entire stack end-to-end, offering correlation to facilitate root cause analysis and minimize MTTR. Therefore, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Normally, we require end-user monitoring for our digital banking services. Since we operate in the financial sector, we need monitoring for our mobile apps and web browsers, particularly for our online banking systems. This is our main use case.

The feature that I appreciate in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is the intuitive and user-friendly dynamic mapping it creates for workflows. The application flow presents a streamlined interface, making it easy to navigate across different interfaces and troubleshoot applications. This interface is particularly valuable for identifying and resolving application issues effectively.

One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.

We have been providing the solutions using AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring for three years.

The solution is stable overall. I can rate it nine out of ten. Occasionally, the agents stop working, which disrupts monitoring, but such instances are rare.

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is scalable. However, I did not find any Docker solution available with it, and a separate instance has to be installed. 

Overall, scalability is fine, and I rate it eight out of ten.

The customer service and support are helpful and responsive. I can rate their support nine out of ten.

Positive

Normally, two to three engineers are involved in the installation process from our side.

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring uses a token-based pricing model, which is complex and can be confusing for customers. Previously, there were different pricing models for web browsers and mobile apps, but now they have unified it. Customers have to pay a premium price, however, they receive considerable value from the product.

We are aware of competitors in the market like Dynatrace and Riverbed. We do not work with them.

Overall, there is room for improvement in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring, so I rate it eight out of ten. 

The complex token-based pricing model can confuse customers when calculating costs.

The performance and DevOps teams use the solution to drill down and find out the root cause if we are getting any high response time. In that condition, we have drilled down and checked out the calls and methods, which are taking too long.

The solution's most valuable feature is the response time from the end-to-end server. The solution is user-friendly and easy to use for everyone.

The solution’s pricing is high and could be reduced. The solution’s setup is a bit complex.

I have been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for five years.

The solution provides good stability.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability depends on how many user licenses you are taking. The solution is charged per user, team, or domain.

We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution. We can raise concerns or send mail regarding issues or difficulties we face, and the support team will contact us. They provide support to configure things or to learn more about their product.

The solution’s initial setup is a bit complex. It took around seven to eight days to set up everything, including the agent and server name.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution.

We are not using the alerts as we have different mechanisms called resilience testing or kiosk testing. The DevOps team uses the alerts. During production, they will get alerts when they see the CPU utilization going beyond the 60% or 70% benchmark they have set.

AppDynamics and Dynatrace are the only two tools that provide accurate or stable end-to-end response time. These two tools can show you everything that's going on from the back end. If we are doing performance testing or any testing, these two tools can provide us with every detail about what's happening in the back end from the server side that we can't see.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We worked on the kernel, and being able to monitor our application is important. We have utilized some predictive analysis, and that seems to be the biggest advantage.

The real-time feature provides me with insights into what's happening. It also tells me if there are opportunities.

I still need to thoroughly assess the stability.

I am not very impressed with support. The service could be better.

Neutral

We previously used Elasticsearch. We switched to AppDynamics for its capabilities. In terms of application monitoring, the differences were evident. The shift occurred starting December, over the last six months, and has shown improvements.

We consulted the company for the setup.

The mean time to respond when there are no issues is crucial. It is about finding the right balance. If running transactions, you should be able to respond promptly, which translates into a figure.

End-user licenses are crucial. We have users who require consistent monitoring, and they engage with it daily. This involves desktop usage and professional management. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.